


Creatures of the sky below

by sarensen



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Gen, brief mention of hux, made-up mythology, speculation about finn’s family, unexpected connections formed via storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 01:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15232566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarensen/pseuds/sarensen
Summary: Their first kiss is gentler and kinder than anything in Rey's life, and in her mind she sees funeral pyres and supernovas and thinks she finally understands what Luke was trying to say.-------A story of the Old Gods, and how Rey got her arm bandages.





	Creatures of the sky below

One.

  
  


On Rey's eighth birthday she decides to run away. Away from Unkar Plutt, away from the rough-looking smugglers in the cantina he makes her clean, away from the strong, withered old women she sees in the desert, who wear her face sometimes in her dreams.

She makes it all the way to the outskirts of town, to Baku Blith's old wayside inn, before the futility of running catches up to her all at once, and crumples her small body against the back wall. 

She huddles against the warm brick, sniffling. Grubby hands wipe tears from her cheeks. The sand beneath her knees is hot and unforgiving. The sun beats down hard enough to dull smell and sound and tint the edges of things with glaring white.

She isn't sure how long she sits there, only that it doesn't matter anyway. People pass by, ignore her, go on their way. It doesn't matter.

Someone stops.

It's the most beautiful woman Rey's ever seen; skin the same color as the evening sky just after sunset and a smile, gentler and kinder than anything in Rey's world. She's tall, and regal, and has golden bangles stacked in towers up both arms.

They jingle and clink together as she crouches down before Rey, and asks, "Are you lost, little girl?"

Rey doesn't answer, but stops crying, eyes fixed on the golden bangles that tinkle softly when the woman reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder.

"Are you looking for your parents?"

Rey can only manage to shake her head slightly, the empty cave in her chest threatening to well up again and eat her words.

Sympathy in the woman's eyes. She sighs slightly. "I see."

Rey doesn't think she does. She's too beautiful for this place. She can never understand.

"I had a son, once," the woman continues, "A beautiful baby boy." Her eyes become distant. "He's lost too. The Old Gods stole him away."

Rey holds her breath and keeps her eyes on the bangles, too afraid to ask.

The woman says, "Where I come from, they say the Old Gods come to take away the children. In exchange, they protect our planet. Creatures of darkness, with stars for eyes, watching over us. My baby is with them, now."

Rey doesn't say,  _ I'm sorry. _ She knows it won't help.

The woman seems to come back to herself, and smiles at Rey again. "What's your name?"

Rey swallows, and remembers to start breathing again, and tells her the name she told Unkar Plutt; the only one she can remember having, now. Maybe she used to have a different name. Maybe the Old Gods stole it away, too.

She reaches out to touch the bangles lightly, and smiles a little at the music they make. She tells the woman, "You're so pretty." On Jakku there is only the desert and the sun, no creatures of beauty, no music.

"Do you like them? The bangles."

Rey nods, sniffing. "What are they?"

"Gifts. On my planet, we wear them as a celebration of life. One for each year."

With big eyes, Rey looks up at her face. "Do old people have really long arms, then?"

The woman laughs, rich and beautiful, like bells chiming. She reaches out to tuck Rey's hair behind her ear. "You'll find them, Rey. You'll find where you belong one day. I believe that."

She gets up, bangles clinking. Rey desperately wants her to stay, wants to beg her not to leave, wants to beg her to take her with her, like the Old Gods. Instead, she just watches, eyes following as the woman disappears into the desert.

In the coming weeks Rey searches everywhere, tries everything: large rusted gears from the depths of old freighter engines, coils of copper wire stolen from abandoned speeders, an empty fusion cylinder warped around the curve of her knee. Her wrists are too small, her bones too fine. The wires pool on the ground at her feet.

One night, exhausted in both body and heart, she clambers in behind the happabore stable to sleep.

And that's where she finds it: a long strip of faded cloth, once white, now yellowed and soft with age. She takes it in both hands reverently, sleep long forgotten, and wraps one end of it around her wrist experimentally - it's not beautiful like the bangles, and it doesn't make music when she moves. But it will do.

She tears off eight strips and wraps them around her arms, four on each side, one on top of the other. They reach just below her elbows. And if she squints and uses her imagination, they remind her just enough of bangles.

She smiles, satisfied. "Happy birthday."

 

 

\----------

Two. 

  
  


One night, the island doesn't come.

Rey jerks awake from a nightmare she can't remember. A name that doesn't belong to her, written in the future as clear and bright as the sun. She lies awake in the dark, heart beating hard enough to hurt, and counts her bandages, six on one arm, over and over, seven on the other arm.

The dark is too heavy, too hot, and she can't breathe. The silence fills her lungs and her ears until she can't take it anymore - she bolts, runs outside gasping for air and falls down, knees sinking into the sand.

It's cold. Her breath steams. Sand cuts roughly into her palms, her knees.

She squeezes her eyes shut until her head hurts, until the nightmare wisps into emptiness and until finally, finally, they come - the Old Gods, tall as the clouds and made of darkness, with stars for eyes, trailing sand dunes in their wake. Slowly their shadows steal toward the horizon, and Rey begs them to take her with them. Begs them until her fingers turn white from clenching and her throat turns raw from screaming. 

Morning comes, and the sun sears the shadows of the Old Gods into the sand, and Rey is alone once again.

 

 

\----------

Three. 

  
  


On Rey's nineteenth birthday, she sits huddled under a blanket in the Falcon with Finn, watching Rose sleep. Finn hasn't left her side. Something inside her keeps reaching for a severed connection, a hole in her chest tainted red by the glow of a lightsaber. She feels broken open, all leaked out and empty. 

But Finn's light is gentle, and warm, and fills her back up. She leeches off him guiltily and wonders if he can feel it - if he would say anything if he could.

Whispered into her ear: "We could just go, you know."

Rey pulls back a little.

"You and me." Finn takes her hand. "We could just take a ship and go. Anywhere. Away from here."

Rey thinks she might love him, a lot. She finds a smile in her, somewhere. "Finn... it's not that easy."

The quiet sounds of the Falcon fill the brief silence between them, before Finn asks, "Why stay? You could be anything." 

"Maybe," Rey concedes, "But I choose to be yours."

Finn, very close now, searches her eyes.

Rey whispers, "Stay with me."

Their first kiss is gentler and kinder than anything in Rey's life, and in her mind she sees funeral pyres and supernovas and thinks she finally understands what Luke was trying to say.

 

 

\----------

Four. 

  
  


On Rey's twenty-second birthday, she and Finn are playing cards while a thunderstorm ravages the settlement outside. Rey loves the rain. She loves playing cards with Finn more.

Their cards are old, faded, dog-eared. Military stock, used by Resistance fighters to identify high ranking First Order officers. The only cards they could find.

She chooses a card off the stack and turns it around, and stares. The face looking back at her is younger than she remembers, but filled with the same pride. She searches its eyes and tries to find the same cruelty she saw on him in person, anything at all that says  _ these are the eyes of a man who slaughtered millions _ . 

The faded text below the face reads, "Armitage Hux."

She doesn't realize she said it out loud until Finn takes the card from her, and slowly puts it on the floor between them.

When he's been quiet for a while, she tries, "Finn?"

"When all this is over, I want to speak to him."

Incredulously: "You want to... speak to him." 

Finn doesn't look up. "I knew his father. At the Stormtrooper Academy. He was a cruel man."

Rey doesn't know what to say, fiddles nervously with the cards in her hand instead.

Finn says, "I just want him to know that I understand."

Rey is quiet for a while, then, "... you forgive him?"

Finn, suddenly fierce, looks up at her. "No. I'll never forgive him for what he did."

"But..."

"I knew  _ his _ father. I didn't know mine."

Rey swallows. "Can you remember anything about them? About your family." They haven't talked about it before.

Finn shakes his head. "Bits and pieces. Nothing more. Sometimes I think I can almost remember what my mother's face looked like. Sometimes, I have these dreams... I think it's a story I heard once. Long ago. Creatures as tall as the clouds, made entirely of darkness, with--"

"--stars for eyes..." Rey completes, breathlessly. 

They trail off. Finn looks up at her, and for a moment, the only sound is their shared breathing.

Rey bites her lip, and lays the cards down and unwinds one of the bandages from her arm. She takes Finn's hand, and wraps it around his wrist experimentally - it's not beautiful like the woman's bangles were, and it doesn't make music when he moves. But it belongs to her. And now it belongs to Finn, too.

Together, they watch the clouds dissolve and the stars drip into the horizon and the orange-slice sun peek over the hills.

Together, they start a new day. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raNhRRFD8BE).


End file.
